Picture from left to right: John Colson, Yu Kambe, Sharon Feng, Kevin Miao, John Barrett

Hyde Park, Chicago, IL – Tuesday evening, the newly created IME Innovation and Commercialization Fellowship Program (ICFP) officially announced that Kevin Miao and John Barrett will be Inaugural Fellows marking a milestone for the three month old program. Joining founders John Colson and Yu Kambe, the 4 Fellows will immediately begin work on IME’s new technology portfolio. The occasion was celebrated with a dinner with IME Associate Dean Sharon Feng.

The ICFP is a student-led effort to facilitate commercialization at the Institute serving as a link between new discoveries and inventions, created in IME labs, and innovation organizations at the University of Chicago, and specifically addresses the challenges associated with commercializing University technology. The ICFP empowers graduate students and postdoctoral scholars affiliated with IME to interface with the UChicago innovation ecosystem. IC Fellows are a resource for IME, and will maintain an active portfolio of Institute discoveries and intellectual property and act as ambassadors to organizations such as the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (through the Booth school), the Chicago Innovation Exchange, and UChicagoTech, the University’s technology transfer office.

JOHN BARRETT received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Nanotechnology from Boston University in Spring 2013. He is working toward his Ph.D. in Biophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago under the dual mentorship of Prof. Matt Tirrell and Prof. Joel Collier. As an undergraduate, John worked with Prof. Hatice Altug to develop a multiplexing plasmonic biosensor integrated with a microfluidic device to quickly and cheaply detect the adsorption of proteins and viruses in a label free manner. His current research aims to study and characterize a potential peptide amphiphile micelle vaccine against Group A Streptococcus. His research interests broadly include biomaterials, synthetic vaccines, immunoengineering and drug development.

KEVIN MIAO is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He received his BA in physics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 2013. There, he worked with Professor Chandrasekhar Ramanathan on NMR probe design and novel probe geometries. Shortly thereafter, Kevin joined Renesys Corporation in a data research and software engineering role. In 2014, he joined Ocrolus, a New York-based startup specializing in automating the Medicaid application and validation process. Kevin is currently advised by Professor David Awschalom, and his research interests include devices utilizing quantum phenomena and quantum sensing within the realm of biomedical engineering.